The Yearning

It’s at me again—eating at me in every spare minute, every time I watch a movie, every time I pick up a book.

I don’t know what to call it except “yearning,” but there’s probably a fancy French name for it . . . Sort of like ennui, but not.

It’s a yearning to create something . . . Bigger, deeper, better than anything I’ve ever even attempted before. Something truly outlandish and REALLY unexpected. Something that people won’t even believe came from me. Something that glorifies God and uses stretches the uses of Story to the boundaries of its capabilities.

I feel this yearning every time I watch a really good movie, hear a really good story, or am in the lull between books (like now). It gnaws at me constantly, and I don’t know how to explain it to hubby or friends or people in the grocery store . . . Though I’d love to yank some of them by the collar and say, “Don’t you feel it sometimes?”

Since beginning this post, thanks to my friend Wendy, I've learned the fancy name for this feeling: it's German, and it's sehnsucht. (I feel compelled to say, "God bless you." ) You can look it up on Wikipedia for a lovely discussion of the term.

C.S. Lewis said there's no direct interpretation but it's like "an inconsolable longing." He characterized it this way in his book, the Weight of Glory: “In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you-- the secret which hurts so much that you take revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence.”

Ah, that's coming very close. All I know is I am eaten up with this feeling every time I sit down to contemplate a new book . . . and I never feel that I've arrived.

~~Angie